Group Dynamic Behavior and Psychometric Profiles as Substantial Driver for Pedestrian Dynamics

Abstract

Our current research lay emphasis on the extended pedestrian percep-tion and cope with both the dynamic group behavior and the individual evalua-tion of situations, and hence, rather focus on the tactical level of movement be-havior. Whereas common movement models primary consider operational as-pects (spatial exclusion or distance and direction related repulsion), the consid-eration of psychophysical concepts and intra-group coordination overcomes the idea of directed repulsion forces and derives specific movement decision with respect to the individual evaluation of situations. To provide a solid basis we analyze both data recorded at a mass event and data from a double-staged evac-uation test to derive essential group dynamic behaviors and psychological relat-ed decision principles, respectively. 1 Introduction Models for pedestrian dynamics cope with different aspects of behavior related to human movements. Generally, such models can be assigned to three different levels of movement characteristics: operational, tactical and strategic behavior. The basic microscopic models (e.g. social force, cellular automat, or discrete choice) particular-ly focus on the operational movement level. Especially, the favorable social force approach (Helbing and Molnar, 1995), which states attraction and repulsion forces between the human beings, turns out as a good analogy to reproduce substantial self-organization effects. Several model modifications and extensions of the social force model have been recently developed by the scientific community. One can notice that sustainable concepts (e.g. discretization, floor fields) will be transferred between the different model approaches, and that the models will converge as an evolutionary consequence. The definition of individual movements as destination driven processes allows for investigations of the superior self-organization effects but it neglects signif-icant group dynamic effects (e.g. intra-group coordination) and psychological influ-ences on (movement) decision processes. The idea of considering the individual hu-man perception to cope with enhanced patterns of movement behavior is from our